1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a copying apparatus for copying a recording medium, a method and a computer program thereof, and more particularly to a copying apparatus for copying a recording medium, a method and a computer program thereof where address information of a recording area is manipulated.
The present invention relates to a copying apparatus for successfully copying an optical recording medium, which is or will be in existence, such as an audio compact disc, a combination of compact discs, a compact disc including other optical recording medium, a compact disc included in other optical recording medium and a CD-R (CD-Recordable) or CD-RW (CD-Rewritable).
Moreover, the present invention is also applied to a recording medium on which digital information such as high quality video signals are recorded, e.g. a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video disc), DVD-R (DVD-Recordable), DVD-RW (DVD-Rewritable), DVD-RAM (DVD-Random Access Memory) or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, for example, in order to retrieve the information recorded on a recording medium by controlling the medium to a reproducing apparatus, it is necessary to obtain the address information indicating where the information is recorded. The recording type of the information needed to record the address information, the content information and/or the like on the recording medium and the information structure of the recording medium are widely known in the art of the present invention.
FIG. 1 shows an example of the structure of information recorded on a general DVD. As shown in FIG. 1, the information recorded on the DVD constitutes a ‘(information) sector’ with a predetermined amount of the information per unit. 17 information sectors are formed in total as shown in FIG. 1. Each of the information sectors includes the content information of 172 bytes and horizontally error correcting parity data of 10 bytes. And, the 17-th sector includes vertically error correcting parity data of 10 bytes. FIG. 1 shows merely an example of the information structure of a general DVD, so it does not limit the scope of the present invention.
In the recording medium with the information structure as above, the address data represents which position on the recording medium certain information is stored at, and thus a part of the address data may serve as the information indicating the position of the sector. The reproducing apparatus generates required control signals by using this address data and performs reproducing operations. For example, when the reproducing apparatus moves over the recording medium or reproduces the medium from a certain position, it can control an operation of searching the information recorded on the medium by referring to the address data.
Recently, however, it is possible to read the information recorded on an optical recording medium easily by using a general personal computer. Consequently, illegal copying which is very easy and diverse has become common and widely accepted. Thus, the protection for the copyright of contents recorded on a medium has become an urgent issue.
Accordingly, the applicant of the present invention has disclosed a copy-protected optical recording medium capable of being reproduced by a general reproducing apparatus, comprising at least one overlapping zone whose address values allocated to information recorded on the recording medium overlap address values of another area in the recording medium and driving information for controlling the reproducing apparatus to read information on the overlapping zone in “a copy-protected optical recording medium capable of being reproduced by a general reproducing apparatus and a method for manufacturing thereof”, International Application No. PCT/KR02/00490 filed on 22 Mar. 2002.
The copy-protected optical recording medium, International Application No. PCT/KR02/00490, will be described in detail referring to FIGS. 2a and 2b. 
FIG. 2a shows a series of pieces of information, hypothetically arranged in a row, recorded on from an innermost track to an outermost track of a general optical recording medium and address values allocated to the series of pieces of the information. And, FIG. 2b shows a series of pieces of information, hypothetically arranged in a row, recorded on from the innermost track to the outermost track of the copy-protected optical recording medium according to the International Application No. PCT/KR02/00490 and address values allocated to the series of pieces of the information.
As shown in FIG. 2a, the address values of the information on the general optical recording medium are allocated in order to linearly increase from the inner tracks to the outer tracks of the medium sequentially. A linearly increased graph is shown at the bottom of the series of pieces of the information. The address values may also linearly decrease from the inner tracks to the outer tracks.
Moreover, in another optical recording medium already known, the information may be chaotically placed on the medium by scrambling the address data. In this way, the reproduction ratio can be increased by correcting errors, even if any physical damage occurs at a certain area on the medium. Even In this case, however, supposing a state where retrieved information is arranged in a row as shown in FIG. 2a, we can understand that the address values linearly increase (or decrease) conceptually.
Meanwhile, as shown in FIG. 2b, the copy-protected optical recording medium according to the International Application No. PCT/KR02/00490 includes at least one overlapping zone whose address values allocated to the information on the medium overlap each other. The address values may be either physical or logical addresses. In FIG. 2a, it is shown that the address values in the overlapping zone and those in a previous zone (referred to as “zone B”) overlap each other.
Moreover, the copy-protected optical recording medium according to the International Application No. PCT/KR02/00490 further includes driving information at a predetermined area for controlling the reproducing apparatus in order to read the information recorded on the overlapping zone. The data on the zone B has the same address values as those of the corresponding data on the overlapping zone, so that the driving information is for driving the reproducing apparatus to access the addresses respectively.
In order to copy the information recorded on a recording medium according to the International Application No. PCT/KR02/00490 in an already known method, it is necessary to use the address data allocated to the above zones for recording information from the zone B and the overlapping zone on a recording medium as a duplicate. Consequently, only one of the pieces of the information on the zone B and the overlapping zone is recorded on a zone with a corresponding address value of the copied medium.
Therefore, when reproducing the copied medium recorded in this way, it is impossible to retrieve one of the pieces of the information on the zone B and the overlapping zone of the original medium from the copied medium. Accordingly, some pieces of the information on the original medium remain not capable of being copied.
Therefore, in the case of the duplicated medium, the data retrieved from a position to which a certain address is allocated is the same regardless of the reproduction progress direction. Since that result is different from a case of the original medium where pieces of data on a position to which the same address is allocated can be different from one another depending on the progress direction, it is possible to discriminate the copied medium from the original medium. Accordingly, by that point an original medium can be protected against duplication or at least can be prevented from reproducing the duplicate of it.
In case of the copy-protected recording medium as above, however, the method causes a problem that a lawful owner also cannot copy any recording medium even within a permitted scope under a law.